Its certainly not a big deal - I feel guilty now for causing perhaps undue focus on what is a small technical point. When we are looking at high quality images it is often only very fine points of presentation that are left to be mentioned. I mention them though because I like to ensure everything is tidied up completely in my own shots, not always successfully though, and I assume that others will be looking towards the same. Sometimes these tiny artifacts can become more apparent at smaller JPEG sizes, which is odd, maybe something to do with the compression?

Anyway, its nothing to distract from a very good shot.

I wouldn't worry about the amount of space - most programmes of this sort I think would take up maybe between 100-300 megabytes, not usually significant on modern computers unless your drive is already full - in that case move some photo or video files off to an external drive.

You might find PDCU is suitable. As I have been telling people here for a long time, it is different to conventional RAW software in its layout - it has multiple control panels that reflect the camera menu screens, and many of the controls are the same as you use on the camera - eg the Custom Image Settings.

So I have always seen it as a good choice for someone who already uses the camera controls for JPEGs, and wants to take advantage of the extra RAW image quality and bit depth - you can produce beautiful 16bit TIFFs in PDCU in a very similar way to how you control the adjustments on the camera. And if you don't need TIFFs you can save out JPEGs of very good quality as well.

Alan, they're both great! I don't usually like a complex background for this kind of shot, but in the first it works well, obviously becasue of the space needed for the reflection, and the framing is very good.

2 has got its narrow DOF which gives us the snippets of in focus grass at the front, and the yellow of the bird standout out beautifully.

I know my small technical gripes are becoming a bit of a cliche, but if it was possible I would try and tidy up the slight halo (its very sharp and thin - is it caused by some masking between the sharp and OOF areas?) across the top of the first bird's head, which draws the eye up from the face as it is.

There's some dispute about that as well ! I've been told that my images are trash (he was referring to the underlying photos, not just the effect versions) and that I should delete the lot.

But I chose the images as examples of the type of scene commonly reproduced by oil paintings of this style. The merits or otherwise of a number of those photos have been discussed here in the past, and I'm not trying to revisit any of that. I don't recall paulyrichards having any opinion on them when they were 'just' photos.

Well don't put words into my mouth please - I certainly didn't say say 'levels sliders will do the full job'. But its good we can agree that there's still work to do.

There's not much merit though in having brighter highlights distracting in the foreground, such as the burger wrappings - much better for the tones to lead the eye through into the scene to the faces. Thats why the Sagelight version takes a more middle ground, with the woman's face at the upper end of the scale

Heres my version using the Sagelight Powerbox control , plus a little Sagelight 'Smart Contrast' ....

Don't worry about the layers then, that applies to Photoshop & PS Elements. Lightroom offers 'non-destructive' editing as well - it won't overwrite your original and keep re-saving it. It works by holding the image in memory in various recorded states as you go. The 'save as' process is about the final output that you choose. If you do nothing at the end of your editing then your changes will be recorded in the LR database to be automatically re-activated when the photo is opened again. Or you can choose to save a new version of the image in a suitable format, depending on the purpose.

Check the LR help for specifics of course.

I appreciate that point, no I don't think it was made before ... I was under the impression that you were ignoring the content and end result. All interesting stuff

Its a little slice of life captured - personlly I'm not too keen on the position that the mouths of those eating have been caught in.

Its very 'flat' though - I'm sure a small brightness boost and stretching of the upper tones upwards would lift it, maybe also a small low shadow contrast boost - I'm not talking about much.

You've tried Sagelight havn't you? Go to the 'powerbox' panel - you open it from the main panel, the button looks like a few brown layers on top of each other. To be honest, one pull on the main strength slider on this 'powerbox' control would sort this photo - now that really is a cool 'one push effect'